Focus on Fostoria - Sept0905

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Focus on Fostoria

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Published on 09/28/05 in the Fostoria
Focus
Shangri-La just another home to Fostoria man
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In the Navy Fostorian Dale Bennett when he served aboard the
aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. The Shangri-La saw action in
the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II and fought in
the battles of Iwo Jima, the Philippines and Okinawa. By LEONARD
SKONECKI Focus Correspondent

Shangri-La — the mythical land of peace and harmony depicted
in James Hilton’s book, “Lost Horizon.” Fostorian
Dale Bennett once called Shangri-La home; not Hilton’s imaginary
paradise, but the USS Shangri-La, an Essex-class aircraft carrier
that made a mess of Japanese armed forces in the year 1945. Dale
enlisted Dec. 11, 1942. “Then I went in the day after Christmas,
Dec. 26, 1942. I got out Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving,
1945.” Dale was a fireman first class. He’s lived
in and around Fostoria all his life. “I was just an 18-year-old
country boy who went to war.” Dale has souvenirs from those
days. One is a copy of “The Shangri-La Horizon,” the
ship’s monthly publication. The September 1945 issue tells
her story from her commissioning to end of the war. Shangri-La
was commissioned at Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Va., Sept.
15, 1944. Dale’s mom received an invitation to the ceremony.
The carrier was christened by Mrs. James Doolittle. That was appropriate
because of a remark President Roosevelt made after her husband
led a surprise raid by 16 B-25 bombers against Tokyo in early
1942. Everyone, including the Japanese command, wondered how the
planes had reached Japan. Roosevelt, not immediately releasing
the information that they’d taken off from the deck of the
carrier USS Hornet, suggested they flew from Shangri-La. The Shangri-La
crew saw considerable action in the Pacific including Iwo Jima,
the Philippines and Okinawa. They also had a beer party on the
island of Mog-Mog. “I was down below decks. I was in action,
but I never saw a thing,” Dale said. “I heard a lot,
boy, it was awfully noisy. I was down in the engine room. Part
of my job was to check the gauges and make sure everything was
in proper operation. Sometimes I put on earphones to talk with
the bridge. They’d tell me what they wanted and I’d
relay the message. “When we got the signal that we were
at battle stations. I was in damage control. In case anything
happened everyone had a station to go to. In case the ship got
hit we were supposed to take care of things. We had something
to do all the time.” Some of those times included Kamikaze
attacks, times that tried a fellow’s nerves. “Oh,
yeah, we’d get scared. There were quite a few times when
the kamikazes got shot down and they’d hit awful close.
It would just rattle the whole ship. They’d have the anti-aircraft
guns going at the same time, we had 3-inch guns, 40-millimeter
and 20-millimeter, trying to hit one little Japanese plane. It
got real noisy in close battle. “You had no idea what was
going on above deck. I don’t know if you call it praying
or not, but you say, ‘If I ever get out of this, I’m
going to be thankful.’ We never got a scratch and that’s
so unusual. So many other ships got blasted.” The Shangri-La
did some blasting of her own. The ship’s guns and the planes
launched from her deck destroyed or damaged 389 enemy aircraft
and 166 Japanese ships. In a situation like that, each crewman
tended desperately to his own job and the big picture sort of
got lost. “When you’re in stuff like that you don’t
realize you were in it until you come home and read about it.
I never knew a thing about the battles of Okinawa, Iwo Jima until
I came home and read about them. “I was in the vicinity
when they dropped the atomic bomb, but it was down south and Hokkaido
was up north. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in the southern part
of Japan. “I heard over the loudspeaker that the war was
over that they dropped the bomb. I never gave it a thought. They
just said it was a big bomb and that Japan would surrender.”
Dale didn’t receive his last copy of the Shangri-La Horizon
until it arrived in the mail after he came home. Pages 18 and
19 told the story of one of the Shangri-La’s pilots, Lt.
Jack G. Dunn. Lt. Dunn took off for a mission on Aug. 15, the
last day of hostilities, VJ Day. He was shot down, managing to
ditch his aircraft in a lake 35 miles from Tokyo. He was a prisoner
of war for 16 days. With the ship’s band playing Happy Days
Are Here Again, Lt. Dunn and four other Shangri-La fliers who’d
been shot down returned to the ship in a rescue plane. The date
was Sept. 2, the day Gen. Douglas MacArthur took the Japanese
surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri. Planes from the
Shangri-La and other carriers flew over the Missouri in the victory
formation. Jack Dunn moved to Fostoria after the war and opened
Dunn’s Lanes. Dale never knew Dunn when they were shipmates.
“I saw him one day out to Kmart or Kroger or someplace,”
Dale said, “and I asked him, ‘I’ve got a book
at home about the Shangri-La. Were you on there?’ “He
said, ‘Oh yeah.’ I said, ‘Were you the one that
got shot down?’ He said ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘All
these years. I bowled up there. I never knew that you and I were
on the same ship.’” It’s not surprising that
Fostorian Dale and Curtice native Jack never met. There were 3,300
men aboard the Shangri-La. “It was like a big city,”
Dale said. “It had everything on it. There were two other
guys from Fostoria on the Shangri-La, though, John Bashore and
George Shank.” The fighting notwithstanding, there was much
to like aboard Shangri-La. “I saw so much of the world.
I went through the Panama Canal three times. I crossed the International
Date Line twice, the Equator four times. Of course, we were zigzagging
all the time to avoid the U-boats.” They zigzagged very
well. When they came home they docked in Los Angeles. On Jan.
2, 1946, 1.5 million people watched the Rose Bowl parade. The
Shangri-La float, sponsored by the city of Long Beach, won the
Sweepstakes Prize for the 57th Tournament of Roses parade. Dale
prizes those days. “I was just one guy. There were so many,
many other guys that were in the service that saw a lot more than
I ever did. I look back on it now, I’m kind of proud of
it. I can say I was there when all this happened. It’s something
you’ll never, never forget.”